My Crazy Office

My Crazy Office is a weekly workplace podcast dedicated to helping listeners navigate their careers. Executive coach Kathi Elster and career therapist Katherine Crowley combine their expertise to solve both serious and silly situations at work. Join Kathi and Katherine as they answer real workplace questions with solid advice and a side of humor. Do you have someone or something at work that’s driving your crazy? Send your questions to info@mycrazyoffice.co. (All submissions kept confidential.)

5 Tips On How to Improve or Maintain Company Morale

  1. Communication is key – keep your staff well informed about job security and the businesses financial health.
  2. Show appreciation – Awards, public thank you, small gifts – wine, food, gasoline etc.
  3. Plan fun company events – picnics, bowling, pot-luck lunch.
  4. Remember birthdays, anniversaries, celebrate each other with a small gift of recognition.
  5. Have managers take the time to meet with staff and check in to see how people are doing, when there is no salary increase, sometimes caring can go along way.
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Responding to negative feedback

How do you feel when someone offers negative feedback to you? Do you appreciate it? Do you wish the person would go away? Do you bristle or blush or get steaming mad?

Receiving, processing and responding to feedback that isn’t positive can be a challenging exercise for many people. If you’re someone who cares deeply about your work, if you’re determined to produce excellent results, negative feedback can be humbling — even painful.

But it’s also extremely rich. If you can take the message and use it for learning purposes, (instead of a whipping post) negative feedback always helps you grow.

Today, if someone criticizes your way of performing a task, or corrects your presentation, or re-writes your copy or critiques your design, see if you can take the information in without feeling bad about yourself or despising the messenger.

Say “I’m willing to find the good in this moment.” Take a breath, thank the person who delivers it, and take a little time to cool off. Then use the feedback to improve your professional self.

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3 Actions to Take When Dealing with a Difficult Boss

The best ways to deal with a difficult boss, is to take care of yourself by:

  1. Detaching – easier said then done, but by making sure that you are exercising – to release the negative energy of dealing with a difficult personality. A boss who is a grandiose or a control freak will exhaust you so finding ways to restore your energy are important.
  2. When dealing with a boss who lies, or is spine-less, take actions to repair you’re emotional state like seeking short-term counseling. Don’t isolate reach out and connect with friends to get a reality check, you are not crazy.
  3. It’s also important to rebuild your confidence. Difficult bosses like a angry yelling boss or a dismissive undermining boss have a way of eroding one’s self confidence, so please be sure to spend time with people who believe in you like a mentor or a past boss who will help you remember who you are.

Once you feel whole again you will be able to see that the issue is not you. At that time remember to document your boss’s actions and take them to HR.

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5 Tips For Working with Difficult People

  1. Don’t react in the heat of the moment

    It’s so tempting when dealing with a difficult person to let them have it, but that never works. You know what happens, you end up getting in trouble because you were heard fighting with a co-worker. So, take a few minutes or even a day to cool off, exercise, do some deep breathing, put the issue in perspective before you say anything.

  2. When speaking to a difficult person address the facts, not their personality

    Once you get personal with a difficult person you are in for a battle. For example, if a difficult co-worker does not deliver their report to you when it’s due. Never say “you always deliver your work late, you are such a problem” instead say, ‘I may have misunderstood something, but I expected that report yesterday, when can I expect it?”

  3. Set clear boundaries with this person and then reinforce those boundaries as needed

    A difficult person has a tendency to not respect boundaries, whether it’s your personal space, being late, or simply not having manners. Whatever it is, if you do not set boundaries they will not set them for themselves. For example, if a work with someone who arrives 15 minutes late to every meeting with you, instead of being mad you can say “ I have limited time to meet with you and it’s important that our meetings start on time, so the next time you are more then 10 minutes late I would like to reschedule” I promise this works for a while then you may have to say it again.

  4. Don’t take their behavior personally

    I know this is easier said then done. But, you have no reason to take this persons behavior personally, because they treat everyone this way. They treated people before you arrived like this and they will treat people after you are long gone this way, IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

  5. Learn to detach

    Detaching is when you understand that you cannot change this person. Understanding this should give you great relief. How they behave is not your responsibility.

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5 Signs That You Need an Executive Coach

During these times of rapid change, many people in management positions are navigating both personal and professional challenges. Perhaps you’re one of those people. You may have recently been promoted to a more advanced management position. Or, maybe your company is under new management,
Or possibly your job has been re-defined and you find yourself managing former peers. Faced with these kinds of career changes, it can be difficult to find the guidance you need.

That’s when an executive coach can provide invaluable support. The job of an executive coach is to assist you in developing professionally and meeting your personal career goals. Executive coaching is designed to enhance on-the-job performance. It helps you develop strategic and leadership skills so that you can meet whatever challenges arise in your workplace.

When is it time to hire an executive coach?

While you may like the idea of having your own support system at work, you may also wonder when it’s appropriate to hire a coach. We’ve identified five situations where the guidance and counsel of an executive coach can really make a difference:

  1. – You’re looking for a confidante but don’t have anyone at work that you can trust.
  2. – You know your career could use a boost but you’re not sure what to do.
  3. – You’re feeling unchallenged at work, and contemplating a job or a career change.
  4. – You’ve been promoted but you aren’t feeling worthy of the promotion.
  5. – You have goals but you aren’t reaching them. Something is in the way but you don’t know what it is.

t is.

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